Overview

Pennsylvania is the fourth largest state in the nation for milk production, after California, Wisconsin, and New York. Cows produce about 1.3 billion gallons of milk every year in Pennsylvania. Interestingly, 99% of Pennsylvania’s dairy farms are family-owned, which is in contrast to states such as California where large industrial dairies dominate production. On most conventional Pennsylvania dairy farms cows are fed forage crops that are grown on farms such as fermented chopped maize plants (silage) and alfalfa. These on-farm forages are mixed with other feed components that are imported to the farm to optimize milk production. There is also an expanding organic dairy sector in Pennsylvania that uses grazing whenever possible to satisfy the U.S. National Organic Program's regulations and organic philosophies of animal management (e.g. Fig. 1.2.8). Pennsylvania’s relatively good soils, temperate climate, and proximity to Eastern U.S. markets have helped to make dairy farms a dominant presence in Pennsylvania agriculture. Farms generally are on flat to hilly topography in what was originally forest, and patches of forest are still very common on steeper terrain throughout Pennsylvania. Manure produced by dairy cows is recycled into the soil to provide crops with nutrients. Farmers have to manage the application of manure and other fertilizers so that nutrients are best used by the crop and do not pollute waterways, which has been a major issue for water quality in the Chesapeake Bay downstream of Pennsylvania farms. Milk produced on these dairy farms is gathered into central processing plants and is then distributed to stores for purchase for consumers, or bought by other dairy industry manufacturers such as yogurt and cheese plants.

Figure 1.2.8. Cows grazing in a pasture on a Pennsylvania Dairy farm.

Credit: Heather Karsten

Be sure to also explore the following website to gain more insight on Pennsylvania’s dairy sector as part of the food system in order to successfully build your concept map and fill in the table items in the assignment:

Center for Dairy Excellence: PA Diary Overview

Overview

Colorado Beef Production: A Tale of Two Feedlots

Beef production on Colorado’s high plains. Few topics arouse as much debate in conversations around the current trends, sustainability, and alternatives in food systems as meat consumption, and especially feedlot beef consumption which requires relatively large amounts of water and energy to grow the feed necessary for cattle production using feedlots. This remarkable if somewhat older video presents in a matter-of-fact way the practices, infrastructure, and modification of nature involved in beef production at small and very large scales on the high plains of Colorado (Warning: this video shows brief scenes from a slaughterhouse, e.g. cutting of carcasses). Watch for details about the use of water in a dryland environment, how feed is acquired in both systems to fatten animals, the use of technology to maximize the weight gain of animals, and the details of transport to market.

Video: Colorado Beef Production 1990 (FWU) - English(14:53)

Overview

International Production of Asparagus in Peru for the Global Food System

Starting from modest beginnings and export of asparagus from Peru to Denmark in the 1950s, the industrial-scale asparagus sector in Peru’s dry coastal valleys (especially around the city of Ica, Peru) grew rapidly in the 1990s into one of the premier examples of a globalized export vegetable sector (Fig. 1.2.9), able to occupy a large percentage of the world’s off-season market in asparagus when producers in the northern hemisphere are not producing asparagus (FAO 2007). The asparagus sector in Peru takes advantage of the extremely dry climate to make asparagus plants go dormant in the same way that winters in the northern hemisphere make the perennial asparagus plants die back so that they create new edible shoots in the spring. When a field of Peruvian asparagus is ready to go into production, irrigation from rivers and river-fed water tables in coastal valleys is turned on, and a flush of asparagus shoots grows, is harvested using labor that is relatively cheap on a global scale, and immediately flown in refrigerated containers to markets in the rest of the world, chiefly Europe. Asparagus is also notable for being a delicacy among U.S. and European consumers, with a sort of star status among gourmet eaters (see e.g. Peruvian Asparagus) Industrial-scale asparagus producers in Peru were able to achieve this scale of production and access to the global market via support from the Peruvian government, the help of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and their own resources and investment, based on earlier successes in the production of cotton in irrigated valleys (FAO, 2007). Interestingly, Ica asparagus growers organized several international tours to learn industrial methods of production in Europe and the U.S. and adapt them to their own region. However, the large scale of production and amounts of water needed are straining water supplies in the Ica region and have prompted objections regarding water supplies for other uses and the environment. Further, expansion of irrigation in Ica has been based on dam-building in upriver sites which alters ecosystems and water rights for other farmers in these valleys. The abundant supply of migrant labor from the Peruvian highlands and the economic power of the growers has also led to labor relations that are often quite unfavorable to workers.

Figure 1.2.9. Tending of asparagus crops in dry coastal valleys of Peru. Photo Credit: Nick Wiesner, used by permission.

Overview

A Regional Food-shed Direct Marketing of Local and Small Scale Farm Production: The New York City Green Markets

Many in the class will be familiar with the recent growth of farmers' markets and other forms of direct marketing in which farmers sell more directly to consumers to capture a greater percentage of the final purchase price. This includes mail-order grass-fed beef from South Dakota, organic farms, and other small farms selling at open-air markets in any given small and medium city, and medium to large scale farms that produce for multiple restaurant accounts in large cities. The New York City greenmarkets (Fig. 1.2.10) are an excellent and long-standing example of this trend, starting with a few street corner vegetable markets and growing into an important hub of the Grow NYC sustainability movement in New York. The Grow NYC website Greenmarket Farmers Markets documents that over 30,000 acres of farmland as well as small fishing operations near New York City form a ‘foodshed (analogous to a watershed feeding to a larger water body) that has made important inroads towards greater access to locally or regionally produced food with more sustainable practices, including participation in food assistance programs that strive to provide greater access to lower-income New Yorkers. Greenmarkets thus provide a growing, if small, proportion of New York City’s food supply.

Fig. 1.2.10. A New York City Greenmarket, similar to food direct marketing examples across the United States, Europe, and other regions.

Credit: Mat McDermott (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Vegetable and livestock producers that participate in New York City greenmarkets are in many ways sustaining and building on the legacy of small truck farms that for generations utilized fertile farmland surrounding many eastern cities (think of the sometimes mysterious identity of New Jersey as the ‘Garden State’). Today these farms generally have land sizes of 5 to 50 acres, much smaller than the farm sizes of Midwestern grain farms or California industrial vegetable production. They are comparatively diverse farms in terms of combining many different products (including eggs and meat) that can be sold for relatively advantageous prices together in a farmers market. Farms like those in the Hudson Valley North of New York City utilize flat, deep soils adjacent to river floodplains that are excellent for long-term production of crops if they are well cared for. These farms are also able to recycle relatively abundant urban wastes from dense urban and suburban populations (e.g. green wastes, manure from neighboring small livestock farms, city and county composting programs) that are used to keep soils extremely productive by global terms. In fact, some of these farms may face some of the same problems of nutrient excesses presented in the case above on Pennsylvania dairy farming systems. They also are able to grow crops for the sole purpose of adding organic matter to the soil and covering the soil in the winter (cover crops) that help to keep soil quality high. Produce and animal products are trucked directly to green market sites in New York City or to pick-up points for subscription-based Community-supported agriculture programs.

Overview

In contrast to the highly specialized and industrialized production of Peruvian asparagus for the global market (above), smallholders in the Andean Mountains of Peru integrate a wide variety of livestock and crop types on their farms, from llamas to sheep to dairy cattle, and from native potato varieties to maize as well as legume grains and forages and vegetables. They also place a high priority on self-sufficiency in many food crops, balanced with sales to local (e.g. within community barter and purchase on community market days) and regional (e.g. wholesale to regional intermediary buyers and markets, Fig. 1.2.11). The variety of crops, livestock, and production is partly explained by the varied elevation and soil types found in the mountainous Andean environment. A high diversity of products, production strategies, and market versus consumption destinations for agricultural production has thus emerged in modern Andean societies as a way to adapt to both the natural risks of a mountain environment (e.g. drought, frost, hail) and the opportunities and challenges of a complex and fluctuating market that very often does not favor the farmer’s interests.

Figure 1.2.11. Two market scenes for regional distribution of local smallholder production in the Central Andes of Peru: Potatoes (top) and squash (bottom).

Credit: Steven Vanek

The integration of small livestock herds in these systems is very important and allows farmers higher value products such as wool and meat that can be used for short-term cash needs. Grazing livestock also allows them to “harvest” manure nutrients via grazing on high-altitude grasslands. When animals are penned into night-time corral areas they produce manure that is stored for use in fertilizing crop fields. Farmers also apply limited amounts of modern chemical fertilizers to their crops, especially those destined for regional markets. Increasingly, farm communities are banding together using strong and complex community government schemes to win government funding for and build community-wide irrigation schemes that are fed by mountain stream systems. These irrigation systems, some very extensive, are used for adaptation to drought years, expansion of cultivated land or irrigation of fodder crops to feed animals year-round in small intensified dairy schemes. The expansion of small dairy enterprises has been driven by increases in the price of milk in Andean countries from growing urban populations. Because of the preponderance of sloped land in these mountain systems, soil productivity for these Andean smallholders is very vulnerable to erosion during the intense rainy season of the Central Andes. Climate change has also tended to accentuate the severity of climate risks in these systems.